


Wonderful Unknown

by queenofchildren



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Lost in the Woods, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 19:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4848104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofchildren/pseuds/queenofchildren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby is struggling to come to terms with Mount Weather and Clarke's departure. A walk with Marcus helps her put things into perspective and learn to look forward instead of back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonderful Unknown

This is just her luck: The first time Abby sets foot out of Camp Jaha after being carried in on a stretcher, she gets lost. Completely and utterly lost in the woods, with the sun setting rapidly over the horizon and the possibility of grounder assassins in the trees and no one with her but Marcus Kane. But when she made for the gates this afternoon, ready to make use of what may be one of the last warm days of the year, Marcus caught up with her easily, and she has not been able to shake him since. He had only suggested she take a guard, but Abby was less than enthused about the prospect of having some awkward guard trailing after her on the first day she got some peace and quiet for herself. Unfortunately, when she refused to take a gunner with her, Marcus had simply grabbed a gun off the nearest guard and started walking beside her, and that’s where he’s been for the last hour.

The problem with that, of course, is that they’ve barely talked since they got back to Camp Jaha – holding hands, of all things, a gesture that belongs to young lovers, not to broken people holding on to a lifeline. But she had been exhausted and near-delirious then, and Marcus’ bandaged hand had been her reassurance that the nightmare really was over, that they were safe. More than that, it had been a sign that whatever guilt she had incurred, whatever mistakes she’d made as chancellor, however many people she may have failed, she was not alone with this burden. For all the times they had fought before, they had been united in that moment.

Of course, their unusual peace lasted only as long as it took Bellamy to make his way from the gate to where she was being treated in Medical and bring her the news, with a look on his face that suggested yet another person had died.

Abby had wanted to send a search team after Clarke the moment she heard of her daughter’s decision to leave, so clearly made under the influence of shock and trauma. But Bellamy had argued that it had been Clarke’s decision, and since she was of age, it was her right to go wherever she pleased. Marcus had supported him by saying that they could not spare the gunners, not as long as their position with the grounders was still so uncertain. She had refused to speak to Marcus for several days afterwards, knowing it was petty but needing to lash out at someone after the pain of losing Clarke again.

Staying in one of the small rooms near Medical, she had limited her interactions to Jackson and the occasional Council member sent to update her on the progress they were making with fences and food and building shelters for the approaching winter. Abby listened and suggested and tried to find some way to stay involved in camp life, but for the two weeks she was bedbound, she felt more and more cut off from the outside world, and less and less inclined to give a damn. She had fought so hard to save her people, to get them to earth, keep them safe, and all it got her was a hole in her leg, guilt over the hundreds of lives that have been lost in the process, and a daughter who was missing yet again.

And between all of that and the pain which they no longer have enough medication to treat, Abby did something she had never done before: she gave herself a week off. One week to recover, grieve, and rage at herself. After being used to relative success – best grades in her year, excellent physical results, raced through her medical studies to become the youngest head of Medical in Ark history – the last few months of her life have just been one failure after another, one loss on top of the next, and in the days after Mount Weather, Abby was sure she had finally reached breaking point.

But of course she had not – humans were not so fragile as that, and her survival instinct, ingrained by generations of forebears and honed by the harsh life in space and on earth, had soon kicked back in. She had eaten the strengthening venison broth Jackson brought her after the first hunting party had returned successfully, had meticulously checked and changed the bandages on her wound, and had slowly but surely started to move around and even put weight on her leg again as soon as possible so as to prevent muscular atrophy. One week after Mount Weather, she let Jackson help her hobble over to a council meeting, proceding to walk longer and longer distances across camp on her own each day.

And now here she is, walking through the dense woods with slow but sure steps, using a sturdy branch as a walking stick. She’s not ready to give up on life yet, not quite. And maybe, she thinks with a sideways glance at her silent companion, maybe there are other things she should not give up on either.

She’s about to break the silence, but Marcus beats her to it.

“Look, Abby, I know I’m not your favourite person right now. But you’re going to have to talk to me again eventually. Not even you can run Camp Jaha all on your own.”

“I  _am_  talking to you.” And she is, of course. It would be beyond childish to act like he didn’t exist just because they had a disagreement. So she says good morning and good night when they come across each other, reacts to his suggestions at council meetings and inquires as to how the projects under his supervision, mainly camp fortification and guard training, are progressing. It’s all perfectly civil. But “civil”, while so much more than she could have ever expected them to be back on the Ark, is not what she has been getting used to since landing on earth. They’ve become respectful, friendly, honest – intimate, even, in what they’ve chosen to tell each other, and she missed that, she realizes now in the quiet of the woods.

“Not enough.” He pauses; sighs. “Not about what counts.”

He voices exactly what she’s been thinking just now, and it startles her, like so much of what he does startles her lately. Does he mean to say that he missed her, too? It seems hard to believe, after the things she’s said to him when he dashed her hopes of sending a seach party after Clarke.

Had their friendship been older and firmer, she was sure they could have come back even from that horrid moment. As much as she wants to, Abby simply does not know how to get back to the place they found for themselves just before Mount Weather, a place of tentative approach, compromise, and sacrifice. Now there’s only silence – a silence which Marcus, however, seems determined to break.

“I know you disagree with my decision not to send a search party after Clarke. But as much as it pains me, I stand by that decision. Our people had suffered enough losses. Our gunners were exhausted, and way too unfamiliar with the terrain to catch up with a single person, and one so unwilling to be found as Clarke. They could have combed the wilderness for weeks and still come up with nothing.”

Abby sighs. She’s not sure she actually wants to have that conversation, but she’s afraid more silence from her will be taken as obstinacy. “I know that, Marcus. And I agree, it would have been useless to send guards after her.”

He stops short at that, looking at her with a surprised expression, and she explains: “I know you were right. But that does not help me one bit. It won’t keep me from worrying about her all the time, wondering if I could have somehow stopped her. Knowing that she only left because I failed her. I left her alone when she needed me, let her kill a friend and lead an army into battle and make impossible decision after impossible decision, and it broke her. And now I don’t even get a chance to try and help her heal.”

She’s breathing hard by the time she’s done and noticing, to her own surprise, that her cheeks feel wet. It takes her a moment to understand that means she’s crying. She wipes at her cheeks angrily, unwilling to look weak in front of him, but Marcus does not react to her tears with anything more than a softening of his voice.

“Maybe we all failed her, every single adult on the Ark who closed their eyes to the system failure and didn’t come up with a better plan in time than sending a bunch of teenagers down alone. But you did what you could. She was the only one the grounders accepted as our leader. What she did at Mount Weather… that could have been avoided, yes, but not by us. We tried and tried to get Wallace to see reason, but he would not listen. The man was determined to get his people to the surface at any cost. Should we have let him torture us all to death?”

“Of course not. But we should have been the ones pulling that lever. We should have taken that burden, not Clarke and Bellamy and Monty.”

“Yes, we should have. But we didn’t.”

They both fall silent. It’s true, and there is nothing more to add to it. There may be a small part of her guilt Abby can rationalize away, but not all of it. And she will have to live with it.

In the silence she starts walking again, forging forward and completely ignoring her surroundings, welcoming the pain in her leg even though as a doctor, she knows it’s a warning sign. She should turn back and rest to keep it from getting worse. After all, she’s still chancellor, still responsible for the lives of hundreds of people. She should make sure she’s up to filling that role, instead of recklessly gambling with her own health.

She allows herself a few more steps, bracing, pained, and too fast for her already harsh breathing, before she comes to a stop and looks around. Time to be rational again and return to Camp Jaha.

Except, she suddenly realizes, she no longer knows which direction the Camp is in, and she can’t see any sign of it through the trees either, not even the top of the radio tower.

“Do you know which way Camp Jaha is?”

He looks around for a moment, frowning at the small paths leading away from them in several directions, before he shakes his head. “Not a clue.”

This is exactly why one shouldn’t have emotional conversations while walking through the woods, Abby thinks exasperatedly. “So what do we do?”

“We could keep walking back for a bit, see if we can find something that looks familiar.” His eyes flicker down to her leg, which she’s trying not to put any weight on by now, and back up to her face, scrunched up in pain and coated in a layer of cold sweat. “But first we take a break. You shouldn’t have walked this far on your bad leg.”

She’s about to protest, more out of habit than because she disagrees with him (her leg really does hurt, and she really should have turned back a while ago), when she notices he’s no longer looking at her. Instead, his eyes are fixed on something behind her, and an expression of wonder steals onto his face.

“Abby, look!”

He doesn’t give her enough time before turning her around by her shoulders, and Abby’s breath hitches as she sees what he’s seen: Ahead and to her right, the trees open onto a small stone promontory, dropping abruptly into nothingness after a few feet and opening up a view that stretches on for miles and miles across the still overwhelmingly big landscape.

Aching leg forgotten, Abby lets Marcus pull her toward the promontory, where they stand still in quiet awe and simply take in the view: Miles and rolling miles of forest, broken occasionally by steep ravines and broad rivers, rocky cliffs and craggy hilltops. From here, earth is an endless sea of colours: red and yellow and a bit of dark green, because it’s fall and the leaves are changing for winter (something she must have learned in earth skills but forgotten long ago). Even the sky itself is turning red and orange with the sinking sun, which sets the horizon aflame and bathes them both in warm golden light, a balm after the cool forest air.

It is breathtaking, but all Abby can see are the many dangers awaiting her daughter out there: Every dramatic ravine and cliff is Clarke falling to her death, every winding river a place she could drown in, every trace of wildlife a potential predator, every red and golden leaf another sign that the days are getting shorter and colder.

“How do I go on without her, Marcus?”

He doesn’t answer right away but sits down on the warm rocks, tugging on her hand for her to do the same – which makes a lot of sense, Abby has to admit, because she really does need a break. It takes her a while to get comfortable, and he waits until she’s seated and looking at him expectantly, holding her eyes as if he wants to make sure she’s really listening.

“You keep telling yourself that Clarke will be fine, that she’ll make it on her own out there and return when she’s ready. You know what Bellamy told us – she said she was afraid that seeing us would remind her of what she did to save us. Doesn’t she deserve some peace and quiet? It if helps her look forward instead of back, maybe her leaving is a good thing.”

“She also deserves to be alive and safe, not to starve and freeze in the wilderness or get tortured to death by grounders!”

“She deserves a whole lot better than she got. But so do you, Abby, who brought us down here, who fought to keep us alive. You deserve to stop feeling responsible about everything that happened and start looking forward. To try and build a better future.”

His words, like they so often do, resonate with her almost physically, sending a shiver of yearning through her that feels a lot like the pain in her leg, except this time it’s everywhere. Because she realizes then that she wants what he’s offering her, wants to look forward instead of back and see if there isn’t something good to be found there. After all, what is there to look back at? The family she had on the Ark, the bit of happiness they wrung out of their frugal diaspora, is long broken up, the man she loved dead, her daughter fleeing demons she failed to protect her from. No, she thinks as her eyes are inescapably drawn back to the breathtaking display before her, there’s nothing to go back to.

Abby takes a long, deep breath, and then she empties her mind as she drinks in the view of the land, sweeping out from under her feet and stretching on until it meets the sky, blood-red fading into orange on the far horizon, then pale yellow and white, and darkening again into blue as it sweeps up above her, as if the sky was preparing a dark canvas best suited to showing off the glittering stars.

“It’s so beautiful here. I don’t think I’ve had one moment to notice it since we landed.”

“You should take more time to notice it. Because this is the payoff for all that pain and death – being here, being on Earth. This is what we dreamed of, Abby.”

Abby tears her eyes off the tableau before her to look at him, surprised. What  _they_  dreamed of?

“I had no idea you were dreaming of earth, too. You seemed so focused on making the Ark outlast us.”

“Because I was afraid to let myself believe that I could actually set foot on earth in my lifetime. We were supposed to be the keepers of humanity, not the ones who returned to earth, and I struggled to make my peace with it. And now…”

“…all of that has changed,” she finishes the sentence, and he nods. But even as she says it, Abby wonders if it’s even true. Everything has changed, dramatically so, but maybe things were never quite like she thought they were in the first place. Maybe it was always too much of a burden for them to keep working towards a future they would never get to see. Maybe he was never cruel and cold, but scared and lonely and desperate to replace lost hope and happiness with duty and logic; living with surviving.

It is now that she notices how close he is, sitting next to her with his knees drawn up to his chest and his hands dangling over them – a youthful, vulnerable pose not at all appropriate for a council member and short-term chancellor, and a sight that makes her insides warm with affection, especially now that they’ve cleared the air between them and he has taken so much off her shoulders.

Closing the distance between them is surprisingly easy, just a turn of her body towards his, propped up on one hand while she puts the other on his arm, to propel herself forward as much as to test if he’ll keep up this last barrier between them.

He does not. He pulls the arm back and her hand with it, so that she lands propped against his chest. It’s a little unconfortable because her torso and legs are at a weird angle and her arm is trapped between them, but she’s too distracted by other things: His eyes, dark but not at all cold like she used to think. The fact that she can feel his breathing quicken and wonders if he too is nervous like a teenager right now. And his lips, not harsh and cruel but expectant and beckoning and yet still (still!) not on hers, and she realizes he’s waiting for her to make the first move. So she does.

The moment her lips touch his, she feels things awakening within her that she hadn’t known she was still capable of experiencing: Excitement, the giddy rush of discovering something new and precious. Desire, hot and strong and invigorating. And happiness, not just relief at finding herself and her people alive against all odds but pure, genuine joy at being herself, in this moment and this place and with this person, and Abby could cry with the force of it if she hadn’t cried so much lately.

So she lets the emotions wash over her until they’re only faintly lapping at the edges of her mind while the center of it is filled with him, and him alone, as it should be in this moment. He lays back at some point, his head landing on the stone with a worrisome thud that she chooses to ignore as long as he’s still able to keep kissing her, and she finally frees her trapped arm and uses it to prop herself up on his shoulder. Not for long, however, because all too soon his hands on her waist are pulling her until she’s draped on top of him, a somewhat confusing sensation because the zippers and pockets of his jacket are digging sharply into her chest but the warm tingling radiating out from the place where her hip rests against his more than makes up for it.  

He keeps it all perfectly respectable, his hands never skirting lower than her waist and barely brushing the sides of her breasts, which are mostly smushed against his chest anyway. And while there’s a part within her that is all urge and passion and rash decisions, Abby mostly agrees that it’s a good idea to take things slow. They do have a camp to run after all.

If they find it, that is, and finally remembering their current situation, Abby reluctantly draws back.

“We should start looking for a way back.”

He looks as reluctant as she feels for a moment, an oddly pleasing sight that causes a slight delay in her plans because she simply has to kiss him just one more time. But eventually she really does roll back and into a sitting position and he jumps to his feet to help her up and offer his arm for her to take as they dive back into the dark depths of the forest. The gentlemanly gesture earns him yet another kiss as well as an actual  _giggle_ , and amidst her unbridled giddiness, Abby catches herself  waiting for the now-familiar guilt to set back in.

She waits the entire time they walk in silence through the darkening forest, going with his initial plan of walking back into the direction they came from: for flashes of memories, disapproving hallucinations of Jake, an apparition of a wounded, dying Clarke who asks why she wasn’t here for her, why she spent an evening frollicking about the woods when people out there may be dying. But nothing happens. Because Marcus is right: They too deserve to look forward. There are things they will have to feel guilty about for a long time to come, but this, their personal attempt at a small piece of happiness, is not one of them.

Lost in her thoughts, she is stopped by an abrupt yank on her arm when Marcus stops in his tracks to peer through the branches before them, where Abby can now make out a faint light from afar – the Camp’s floodlights.  

“We may have gotten a little lost, but for now at least,” he turns to look at her with a triumphant grin, “it looks like we’re out of the woods.”

Abby rolls her eyes at the dramatic gesture and ridiculous pun, but she can’t quite help the smile tugging at her lips. As they start stumbling towards it through the darkening forest, Abby can soon make out a small path leading them straight to the camp gates. The thought suddenly hits her that they may not have been quite as lost as she thought – perhaps Marcus had simply decided that they should be.

Whatever happened, she thinks, getting lost and finding herself bathed in sunset light was exactly what she needed. Stepping closer to Marcus, she slips her hand into his, revelling in the warmth of his skin as well as the small jolt of electricity that shoots through her. He slows down and smiles at her, a little shyly, and Abby leans up and kisses him once more; a quick, reassuring peck. What happened here today was not an interlude, her kiss says: it was a beginning.

“Let’s go home.”

Together, they start the slow walk back to Camp Jaha.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ingrid Michaelson's song "Wonderful Unknown".


End file.
